When Worlds Collide
by StarCollector32199
Summary: What happens when the boys are down at the beach and meet some girls who are so much like them, it's scary?


_"Not your steppin' stone… I'm not your steppin' stone… Not your steppin' stone…"_ All four of them sang as they played their instruments. They sounded pretty good until a string on Mike's guitar snapped. "Hey, Davy, man, could you give me a G, and not like last time," he requested, remembering how the last time he made that request, Davy tore the string off his own guitar and started laughing. Davy, who didn't often get to play guitar, always got excited and acted funny when he did get the guitar. He looked down at his own guitar and smiled as he turned to Peter and took the G off of his guitar and handed the string to Mike, laughing. "Hey, man," Peter protested as Mike rolled his eyes and Micky laughed quietly to himself. They started the song over and continued to rehearse their other songs incessantly. This went on for hours.

They stepped out of the pad for a walk on the beach. It had been a long day of rehearsing and they were in desperate need of some relaxation and fun. Mike, with his green wool hat fixed atop his head walked ahead of Micky and Peter, who had Davy running behind them to catch up with his three friends. Under his arm, Mike had rolled up their beach blanket. He stopped walking and looked around. Micky and Peter, who had been kicking sand at each other bumped into Mike and Davy finally had a chance to catch up. The sun was high above their heads and the cool salty waves of the ocean beckoned to them, inviting them to come and have a swim.

"This looks like a good spot," Mike said as he unrolled the blanket as if it were an extremely oversized scroll. The four young men had found themselves a nice spot: not too far from the water, but not too close—a short wall of rocks to their left, nothing but lovely white sand to their right. Micky tore of his shirt. "Last one in's a dirty rat," he said as he started running to the water, three boys running behind him, yelling in protest and laughing. Davy, however, stopped running. He turned around. He could have sworn he heard a laugh that sounded like his own, only higher pitched. He walked cautiously back to where they had set up camp and looked around. He heard the laugh again and turned around to find a group of four girls emerging from behind the rocks. He couldn't believe it.

One girl was blonde and getting funny looks from the other three, but she smiled widely, nonetheless. Another girl was tall with dark wavy hair and had a wool hat atop her head. Another girl had a messy head of dark curls and seemed to have an energy about her that could hardly be contained. And then there was that one. She was shorter than the others with brown hair, brown eyes, and a sweet face. She wore a blue shirt over her red-orange swimsuit. She, too, was running to keep up with her taller friends.

Suddenly the short girl noticed him and stopped running. They both stared at each other for a while. It didn't take long for the other boys to notice that Davy was gone and they started calling for him.

"Davy! Davy! Where are you?" Peter called for him. Micky began diving into the water below them. He came up and cried out, "We've lost him, fellas. Davy's drowned," as he made loud sobbing sounds. Mike swam over and patted both Micky and Pete as they lamented. He looked up towards the shore and grinned. "No, he hasn't drowned. Look up, boys," he said to them and pointed. They looked up to see Davy, staring at a girl who was staring back at him. Micky rolled his eyes. "Well, I didn't miss him that much," he said as he resumed his swimming.

Back on shore, Davy and the girl were now standing much closer to each other. "Hello," she said. "Hi," Davy said, "you wouldn't happen to be from Manchester, would you?" She smiled at him. "I would," she said, her accent so familiar. "I'm Davy, Davy Jones," he said as he stuck out his hand. She shook his hand and introduced herself, "I'm Joanie Davidson." He couldn't believe it. He turned to the side, as if speaking to an audience and said, "imagine that."

Just then, the other boys, running up the beach to talk Davy out of falling in love again took notice of the other three girls. They were walking up to Joanie to collect her. Micky, Mike and Peter stopped and stared as the three girls did the same. The one wearing the wool hat walked up to Mike. "Haven't I seen you some place before?" She asked him. Mike, dumbfounded, responded, "in Texas perhaps," he had guessed from her familiar accent. "I'm Mike," he said. She smiled, "I'm Michelle." The other two boys would learn that the blonde one was named Paige (short for Petricia-Paige) and the noisy spastic one was Mickaela. "What is this?" Micky turned to Peter, confusion scribbled all over his face. Peter shrugged, "I give up, what?" he responded, causing Micky to roll his eyes so dramatically he feared they may never return to their original position.

The eight of them had gone back to the pad—the one belonging to the boys, that is—and while Mike went and got cleaned up, Micky and Pete stayed with Davy and the girls as they waited for the bathroom. "Don't tell me," Davy said, "you girls are out-of-work musicians and you probably haven't had a gig in a little while." The four girls turned to each other and nodded. "We'll be right back," Davy reassured them before taking Pete and and Micky outside behind the pad.

"It's incredible," Davy said as soon as he closed the door, "they're us if we were girls!" Micky was still staring at them when he answered, "I know, but where did we—I mean they—come from?" The three of them looked at their female counterparts and remained perplexed. "I don't know, but I think the Mike-girl is kind of pretty," Peter suddenly spoke up. He was suddenly met with a chorus of Oh, Peter, and Peter, no, and You must be joking, this one from Davy of course. "The last time you fell in love with a girl like Mike, you found out that the princess was a married man with kids," Micky quickly reminded his friend.

Mike finally came out of the bathroom and sat down on the couch next to Mr. Schneider. The other three boys saw him and decided to come inside and join him. Once inside, Davy struggled to move heavy Mr. Schneider to the kitchen table as the other boys crowded around Mike. When Davy came back, there was no space for him so he sat on the floor in front of the couch and Peter reached down to pet his friend's head like it were a dog's.

"So where did you girls say you were from?" Mike asked them. Michelle spoke up first, "well I told you down at the beach that I'm from the great state of Texas. Mickaela here is from Burbank, not too far from here. Petricia-Paige is from Greenwich Village in New York, and little Joanie over there is from Manchester."

Micky laughed, "hey that's where each of us is from," causing Peter to look at him and ask, "it is?" Sometimes Peter, though he was a sweet boy, was absolutely hopeless. The conversation dragged on as Mike continued to ask Michelle questions that he already knew all the answers to. Finally they asked each other, "So how did you get here?"

It was starting to get late and the girls said that they were heading back to their pad but they would be happy to meet them back on the beach in the morning, to which the boys eagerly agreed. After they left, Davy sat on the counter next to the sink while Mike, Micky and Peter sat at the table with Mr. Schneider. "You know," Davy began, "I don't think it's just a coincidence. I think something strange is happening, like they are actually us and we are them." The other boys looked up at him. "I agree with you, but how is it even possible? There's only one of every person in the world, right?" Mike was starting to question himself. None of it made sense. It made Davy feel funny because he didn't want to admit to his friends that he thought Joanie was pretty and that he liked her because it was too weird. She was him, and that fact that they were the same person made him feel narcissistic. Was it weird to be in love with the girl version of himself? He didn't want to know what his friends would have to say about that. At least, he thought, he didn't have a crush on Michelle like Peter did.

Back at their own pad, the girls sat around like they did when they were with the boys. Joanie had herself perched on the stairs, Michelle sat on the edge of the bandstand, Paige sat on the counter and Mickaela laid down on the couch. It was a long time before anyone said anything. "You know," Paige said, "I've always believed that there is a parallel universe where we exist as the opposite sex." For the fist time, they didn't give her looks of worry and pity for saying something like that. There was no other explanation for what was currently happening.


End file.
